I HAD to do a double take this week when I read a headline declaring that child marriages are to be banned here, because I never realised we had that going on to begin with.

It turns out that this involves putting the legal age for nuptials up from 16 to 18 – so not quite the image I was conjuring of wee girls in their Communion dresses being married off to relics.

But now that I think of it, at 16 we are just that: children.

I vaguely recall knowing about this rule where you could get married at 16 with a parent’s permission but I can’t call forth one instance of somebody who actually availed of this loophole in my generation.

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I’m sure it was the done thing in my granny’s day, as I know a few older women who were married at 17, but I thought this was all in a time where people believed a woman to be a spinster if she wasn’t out of the house by 20.

Of all the wee women I’ve spoken to who stayed married since their teens, I........

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